


Take a Little Time

by voodoochild



Category: Doctor Who, Torchwood
Genre: Crossover, Gen, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-16
Updated: 2010-03-16
Packaged: 2017-10-08 01:18:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/71222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voodoochild/pseuds/voodoochild
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alice Carter takes drastic measures after what her father does to her. Nyssa of Traken understands drastic measures and fathers who do horrible things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Take a Little Time

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Noe Venable's "Five on the Dime". Takes place directly after "Children of Earth", though it goes AU during one of the final scenes. Consider yourself warned that it spoils the entire miniseries. Also spoils "Logopolis", if you consider 20-some year old episodes spoiler fodder.

After . . . well, after. Everything is divided, now, into Before and After.

Before she knew what her father was truly capable of. Before the bastard took her son from her and "sacrificed" (that's the word he'd used, sitting there out in the hallway, voice shaking as if he could ever, ever comprehend what he'd done to her) him to the 456. Before she'd ever pulled a gun on him.

She remembers the first time she heard a hint of what he really was, that he wasn't just an expat American who did some government work.

_Vortex Manipulator, Allie_, he'd said, and Mum pressed her lips together. _Travels in time and space._

_Anywhere?_, she asked, all of eight years old, then, barely older than Stephen. Still getting used to being called "Alice" instead of "Melissa".

He'd smiled, picked her up and swung her around, the way he did when he wanted to reassure her mother.

(Look, see how normal, how human I am? I can be a father.)

_When it's working properly? Anywhere you want._

Mum had interrupted before she could pester him for more stories of all the places he'd been, all the things he'd seen. _You promised, Jack_, she said, taking Alice from his arms. _You stay here until she's grown. And you don't take her anywhere, not ever._

Sorry, Mum. She's grown now, has been for years, and Jack Harkness owes her a death.

She looks into his eyes, pulls the trigger, and watches him go down with a .38 caliber bullet between the eyes. Pulls the Vortex Manipulator out of her pocket; she'd found it, in the box of possibly salvageable wreckage from the Plass explosion and flips it open. It's lit up, and she's programmed it using what information she could piece together from the Torchwood software. That Operative, Johnson, knew perfectly well what she was looking for, and made all her minions look the other way while Alice researched oscillation frequencies and transmat coordinates. She presses the de-mat button just as she hears a gasp from behind her.

The last thing she hears is her father, calling her name.

~*~*~*~

Rome, 1967.

She's dressed accordingly - while her father can miraculously get away with wearing a military greatcoat and braces for seventy-odd years, Mum had taught her the importance of blending in. A blue jacket, jeans and a black tee-shirt are pretty standard wherever you go on Earth in the mid-20th to late 21st century. The Via del Lucchesi is quiet, though there are a good number of people around Trevi Fountain itself. She takes a seat on a bench near the fountain and waits - five minutes to midnight. She's right on time.

She knows how this story is supposed to go.

Mum was a diplomat's daughter, in Italy for three years. Granddad worked with Torchwood Eight in Rome, and in June of '67, was called in to help deal with a Sontaran invasion. Torchwood Three was taking point. And on the night of June 25th, a few minutes past midnight, Jack Harkness would meet Lucia Moretti being chased through the Via del Lucchesi.

The gun is hot at the small of her back, almost branding-hot. It's one of her father's weapons, he'd given it to her years ago, but Alice swears she can still feel his fingerprints (if he even has fingerprints) all over it. She's not deluding herself into thinking she can kill him here - he'll just come back, and he'll be pissed - but at the very least, she can get to her mother before he can, and they'll never meet.

And then - well, who the hell knows? She's not good at this whole time-travel grandfather paradox applied bollocks, but she figures she's not going to be around to see the fallout. Screw the timelines, if her death ensures that her son will never, ever know the suffering she's just witnessed, she'll kill herself a thousand times over.

_"Perché mi segue? Partirmi sola!"_

It's been a while, and her Italian's rusty, but that's her mother's voice, no doubt about it. Lucia comes tearing into the Piazza di Trevi, and Alice rises to her feet. She lines up a shot - _arm at a right angle to your body, that's it, Allie, block everything out but yourself and your target, and squeeze the trigger firmly_ \- and takes it, her mother's pursuer dropping like a stone. She scans the area, no witnesses, though the gunshot's going to draw attention very, very soon.

Her mother skids to a stop beside her, all high heels and flying skirts. God, she looks so young - Alice can't even remember her ever looking so bright and vibrant - and Lucia stares at the gun in her hand.

_"Molto grazie. Chi sono? Che fa con una pistola?"_

_"Non è importante,"_ she says, fumbling for the words and pulling Lucia with her into the shadows as people begin making their way into the Piazza. _"Appena tornare a casa."_

_"Chi sono Torchwood? Mia padre l'ha inviata?"_

Christ, her mother is stubborn. Alice gets her around the corner and runs smack into a very familiar blue greatcoat.

"Lucia Moretti? My name's Jack Harkness, I work with your father. Are you hurt?" At Lucia's shake of the head, he turns to Alice. "Nice shot. What division are you?"

No, no, no. This is not happening. She came back here to make sure this wouldn't happen, and it's still happening. Her father still looks exactly the same, and he has his arm around her mother, and Lucia's looking at him like he's just hung the moon.

"Answer me," Jack snaps, and god, does she remember that tone.

"My name's Carter. I'm MI5, assigned to this project. Signora Moretti is one of our protectees. I'm just doing my job," she lies, falling back on everything her father's ever let slip about special ops while she works out a clear route to the Via delle Moratte.

She takes off before he can question her further, or notice the identical Vortex Manipulators they're wearing. Her boots clack on the concrete as she rounds the corner and ducks down an alleyway. Speeding down the Via del Corso and ducking through the crowds at the Piazza Colonna, she hits the Via del Tritone and wanders down a bit before buying a scarf and relieving the distracted shopkeeper of a jacket - if anyone's looking for her, they won't be looking for a woman in an orange paisley scarf and brown leather jacket. She dumps her old coat in a trashcan - it's identifiable, and more than that, it's too much like his, all blue wool and brass buttons. She sits down at a corner cafe and orders a large glass of chianti, because heaven knows she needs a drink.

What she truly needs, in point of fact, is her son, alive. Or her father not to be.

~*~*~*~

One glass has turned into four, and Alice rubs a bleary hand through her hair. The waitress hasn't said anything, bless her, just brought her some biscotti after the second glass and a doppio espresso after the third. Judging by her sympathetic glance, the waitress has seen more than her share of self-destructive women.

As has the girl at the next table, apparently. She's young - far too young to be out so late, in Alice's parentally-oriented opinion - wearing not-quite anachronistic clothing and her hair in messy brown curls. She doesn't look out of place, per se, but there's something off about her like there's something off about Jack.

But she sits down at Alice's table, a full cup of tea in one hand and a bottle of medicine in the other.

"You look as though you need this."

Alice takes the bottle, though she does shift into a position where it'd be easier to draw the gun at her back, if she needs to. She does a double-take when she sees the label. "Ibuprofen? That wasn't market-released until 1969."

The girl shakes her head. "No, it wasn't. Which you wouldn't know if you were really supposed to be here. Does it matter?"

Christ, her head feels like it's got an entire percussion section inside it. "Not so much. Cheers."

She downs the ibuprofen, chasing it with the tea, and the girl flags down the waitress for a cappucino. "Coffee is amazing, isn't it? I never had anything like it, growing up."

"And which time period was that in?" Alice asks, an edge to her voice.

The girl just laughs softly. "By your calendar? 1980."

"Why wouldn't you have coffee? I spent most of the eighties in a caffeine-induced haze, getting my master's."

Something in that sentence causes the girl to freeze, breathing going shallow like she's very, very scared, or very, very angry. Alice knows the expression well, used to see it on her mother's face whenever her father was around. Dad- No. Jack, she's going to have to start calling him Jack, because he isn't her father any longer, blue-eyed bastard with his RAF coat and accent-from-nowhere. He's not American - she'd traveled all over America when she was doing her master's in linguistics - and not even Torchwood has got accurate paperwork on him.

"Hey," she says, reaching out and clasping the girl's hand. "Are you all right? I'm sorry, I didn't even get your name."

A soft smile and squeeze of her hand. "Nyssa. My name's Nyssa."

~*~*~*~

They've ordered a bottle of Chianti - Nyssa's apparently never had wine before, either - and Nyssa cocks her head and looks at Alice.

"What happened? What are you doing here?"

Alice takes a long drink. "My son is dead," she finally says. "My Steven. Only eight years old, and he's dead. Everyone else lived, the world was saved, but not my son. And my father - my own father, who could have marched into battle to save him - let it happen."

The story comes spilling out: her father, the man who could never die; Torchwood Three and the explosion along Cardiff Bay; her mother's dying wish - never let Steven know about his family; the 456 using Earth's children in an intergalactic drug trade; Jack channeling the frequency through Steven; her little boy, bleeding from eyes and ears; her screaming and banging on the heavy glass to stop, let her in, don't do it. And then walking up to him in that hallway, shooting him, and programming the Vortex Manipulator for June of '67.

She's flipping certifiable, she is - telling all of this to a girl barely old enough to drive, whom she's never met before in her life. She should pistol-whip the girl and run. Possibly combine the ibuprofen with the Xanax they'd tried to give her After, and mix it into the wine for a poor-man's RetCon. But there's something in Nyssa's eyes that says she knows Alice's pain, knows what it's like to lose everything. And if she harms this girl, who's done nothing but try and help, she's just as bad as her father.

Nyssa swirls the inch or so of wine in her glass contemplatively, then looks up at Alice. "My father killed an entire planet. _My_ planet. I stood there, watching it collapse into entropy, millions of people screaming and being blinked out of existence because of my own father. Only, it wasn't him; it was an evil man who'd killed him and taken his body. He's walking around, right now, committing terrible crimes while wearing my father's face."

Alice doesn't know what to say. What the hell can you say to something like that?

"I hated him - oh, how I hated him. Dreamed every night of the ways I could kill him, over and over again, enough to make me sick. He'd always come back, wearing my father's face and laughing at me. Silly little girl crying over her father. Nothing helps, Alice, trust me on that. No matter what you try to do - what you try and change."

Nyssa's voice has gone clear, and Alice looks up to meet her eyes. Shit, she knows. She doesn't know how Nyssa figured out what she'd tried to do, but there's no mistaking it.

"How did you-"

Nyssa shakes her head and taps the leather strap at Alice's wrist. "I know a temporal device when I see one. It's far too sophisticated for me to figure out, but I have a rough idea of what it does. Also, that gun at your back."

Alice has to give her credit, she's smart and she's perceptive. Jack would love her, she thinks, bitterly. He told her stories when she was little, about girls he knew, girls like her mother, like Estelle Cole, like Rose Tyler. Later, he told her son about Gwen Cooper and Toshiko Sato, before . . . well, Before.

"My mother met my father on June 25th, 1967, on the Via del Lucchesi near Trevi Fountain. She was being chased by purse-snatchers and they'd been shooting at her. He took them out and walked her home. She fell in love with him at first sight. I was born a year later."

"Tonight is June 25th," Nyssa says, eyes widening. "I heard gun- it was you. You tried to keep them from meeting."

"Didn't try hard enough, apparently."

Nyssa is quiet for a moment, then finishes her drink in one swallow. She doesn't cough or wince, surprisingly. She looks over at Alice, contemplative.

"There was a saying on Traken, one my father used to love: Good or ill, a parent's worth is measured by the deeds of their children. He always said that he could die happy, because I would be there after he was gone. I choose to think he did die knowing he would live on in my memories. Hate your father for what he is, hate him for what he's done, but don't hate yourself. He's not worth that."

She pulls out some lira and places it next to the wine bottle, then stands up.

"I really should be going. The Doctor will be wondering where I've disappeared to."

The Doctor? The actual-

"Take care of yourself," Nyssa says, before rounding the corner.

Alice follows her, but all she sees is an empty alley and hears the remnant of a faint whooshing, metallic sound; the TARDIS. It's got to have been the TARDIS. Her inner child is a little disappointed she didn't actually get to see it. She used to beg her father for stories of his travels with the Doctor. The waterfalls on Woman Wept. Slitheen on Raxacoricofallapatorius. The interstellar casinos on Delta Centauri and the castles made of glass on Ilyrium.

The Doctor used to be a fairy tale - a secret between her and her father. Alice doesn't know what he is now, if he only saves Earth when it suits him and not when it involves children dying and her son being sacrificed. She thinks she might punch him if she saw him now - if not shoot him on sight the way she will a certain ex-Time Agent and leader of Torchwood Three. She's got a Vortex Manipulator, a gun, and the entire universe at her disposal, and while she's not looking for death, anymore, she can't say she's about to go back to 2009 and face a life without Steven.

Her brown leather coat flaps in the breeze as she walks through the streets of Rome.

**Author's Note:**

> _Perché mi segue? Partirmi sola!_ \- Why are you following me? Leave me alone!  
> _Molto grazie. Chi sono? Che fa con una pistola?_ \- Many thanks. Who are you? Why do you have a gun?  
> _Non è importante. Apenna tornare a casa_ \- That's not important. You should go home.  
> _Chi sono Torchwood? Mia padre l'ha inviata?_ \- Are you Torchwood? Did my father send you?


End file.
